Título: The Impact of Disease-Specific Health Insurance Reform on Mortality
Speaker: Felipe Menares (UC Berkeley)
Abstract: «We study the impact of a healthcare reform that guaranteed universal access to care for a specific set of diseases. Using the universe of death and inpatient records from Chile and a difference-in-differences research design, we show that deaths from the diseases covered by this reform decreased by 4.4%. The impact was larger for diseases that are more amenable to health care, which decreased by 7.1%. Additionally, the reform led to a 16.3% increase in surgeries and a 6.9% decrease in in-hospital deaths. Longitudinal survey data and back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the reform also resulted in more medical visits and reduced out-of-pocket expenses for beneficiaries, ultimately increasing life expectancy by 0.29 years.»
